


When the World Stops Spinning

by songsofgallifrey



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Infinity War AU, Loki (Marvel) - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 13:02:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15292098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songsofgallifrey/pseuds/songsofgallifrey
Summary: Loki and Thor made it to Wakanda. With Thanos well on his way, everyone is desperate for a plan. Alec is the last person Loki thought he would see. Can love be rekindled at the end of the world?





	When the World Stops Spinning

**Author's Note:**

> I AU'd the hell out of Infinity War here, so there are obviously going to be spoilers for the film. This was written for a writing challenge on Tumblr. I hope you all enjoy this, and make sure you have tissues!

“You’re not a prisoner here, brother.” 

 

Thor came out into the hallway of the Wakandan capitol to speak with Loki, letting Shuri and the others in the lab discuss removing the Mind Stone from the living machine Vision without him. “You can come in and see if the Stone will respond to your magic, it may help.”

 

Loki did not turn to look at him. “If I never see that Stone again in the thousands of years I have left, it’ll be too soon,” he murmured as he picked at his index fingernail. “That Stone knows me. Remembers me. I can’t go near it. Just kill the Vision. He asked you to do it.”

 

“We’re trying to avoid as many deaths as we can, with who we have headed toward us, Loki.” Thor sighed. “Very well, but you don’t have to stand out here and sulk. Go join the guards in their watch, if they’ll let you. Or just get some air.”

 

“Do you think this is the time for idle actions, Thor? I can’t do anything, but I can’t do  _ nothing. _ ” Though the Stone had a new housing - Loki neither knew nor cared how - he could still feel the pull of its influence, and it was making him anxious. “I should have gotten the Tesseract back when I had the  _ chance! _ ” 

 

A flash of seidr conjured a dagger in Loki’s hand, and he threw it down the hall in his anger, without looking. When it didn’t hit its target, Loki turned to see if it had injured anyone, and he forgot how to breathe.

 

Standing calmly less than twenty feet away, Loki’s dagger in his hand where he had caught it in midair, was a man Loki had thought he would never again lay eyes on. He almost didn’t want to believe he was actually here. Did Thor see him too? Loki looked to his brother for a reaction. 

 

“Alec, my friend! How wonderful to see you here, though I would have preferred better circumstances.” Thor, in an uncharacteristically insightful gesture, strode past a temporarily paralyzed Loki to pick Alec up and hug him tightly. 

 

“You - mm - too, Thor,” Alec groaned. Thor put him down and he smiled sheepishly at Loki. “Hey,” he said, holding Loki’s surprised gaze. 

 

“Alec,” Loki breathed, still frozen against the wall. “I thought you’d been killed. I heard you were in New York… Thanos...” 

 

The young man let out a breathy laugh and tucked a loose strand of hair behind his ear. “Takes a lot more than a few aliens to get rid of me.”

 

Alec looked almost exactly as Loki had remembered him, save for maybe a few lines on his face that made him look older and more experienced. He still had the same shoulder-length dark brown hair that he wore in a ponytail at the base of his neck, the same star-shaped birthmark beneath the sharp curve of his jaw, even the same ambitious spark in his amber eyes. He had built some muscle and obtained a few scars over the years, but that mattered not.

 

With a shaky sigh, Loki made his feet move until he was standing before the only man he had ever loved, capturing Alec’s soft lips in a desperate kiss. He felt Alec tense against him, and when Loki pulled away he stiffened, the wall around his heart slamming shut again. 

 

“Oh, uh,” Alec stammered, taking a few steps back as Loki grew increasingly angry. “No offense. It’s just...you disappeared all those years ago and I had to move on. I’m sorry.”

 

Alec’s logic was sound, but Loki’s heart was not in the mood to respond to logic. The world was ending, the Mind Stone was making him paranoid and unreasonable, and he felt like deflecting. “No,” he said flatly, “ _ I’m  _ sorry. Sorry that I wasted more than a year with you, just for you to turn your back on me the second I have to leave.”

 

Thor turned to him, appalled. “Loki!”

 

“What was I supposed to do, wait around for you, when as far as everyone knew, you were  _ dead _ ?!” 

 

It hurt Loki to hurt Alec this way but he couldn’t stop the words as they tumbled from his mouth. “I should have known a  _ mortal  _ wouldn’t know the meaning of fidelity,” he spat at Alec. 

 

“You wouldn’t know the truth if it bit you in the ass!” By then Natasha and Steve had stuck their heads out of the door to the lab to see what was going on. Alec pointed his finger at Loki, inches from his nose. “Some  _ god _ you are,” he sneered. “All you do is fuck everything up and expect everyone else to fix the mess.”

 

Loki drew another dagger and pushed it beneath Alec’s chin. “Challenge me again and you’ll see exactly what a  _ god _ is capable of.”

 

Tense silence stretched out for several seconds before Thor decided to intervene. “Loki,” he said calmly, pushing against Loki’s chest, “go into the lab and channel some of that energy into helping Shuri and Banner. Alec, you...do something else. There’s enough going on right now.”

 

“Fine,” Alec huffed, and turned on his heels toward the elevator. “I’m going outside to patrol.”

 

Loki couldn’t help but give the last word as Alec got into the elevator. “Fine!  **Go and get yourself blown up for all I care!** ”

 

…………………………………………...

 

“You...you should’ve gone for the head.”

 

“NO-”

 

Just as Loki leapt into the air to drive his daggers into the back of Thanos’ skull and end him for good, the Titan raised the gauntlet and snapped his fingers. A powerful shockwave erupted from it, pushing Loki backward onto the dirt and knocking the wind out of him. For a few seconds everyone was still, momentarily stunned, looking around to see if anything happened. Thor released his axe, still buried in Thanos’ chest, and saw Loki lying on the ground, daggers still in his hands. The gauntlet was blackened and crumpled, but the Stones within it glowed bright as ever. Loki could feel the change in the air. Something indescribably  _ wrong _ was about to happen.

 

“ _ What did you do?! _ ” Thor demanded, clenching his fists. Thanos raised the gauntlet again and vanished into a portal, the axe falling to the ground. He saw Loki and rushed over to him. 

 

“You fool, he could have killed you! Are you alright?”

 

Loki frowned, holding a hand to his stomach. “Something’s not right. He did...something... “ He flinched and closed his eyes, his teeth clenched in pain. “It’s not over, Thor. I can feel it. I think he did it.” The color drained from his face as he imagined the magnitude of Thanos’ actions - if he succeeded, and if it truly was random, it would result in a lot more than half of the population of the universe dying.

 

“Loki! I’m so sorry, I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” Loki opened his eyes to see Alec running - limping - toward him, panting and holding his ribs. Blood both alien and human was splattered all over his armor. “What happened?” Alec asked breathlessly, and helped Loki to his feet. “Where’s Thanos? Did you guys kill him?”

 

Thor shook his head, his shaking hands throwing sparks between his fingers. “We have to find him,” he stated simply, the very ground shaking with the rumble of thunder. 

 

“I’ll go too,” Alec volunteered immediately. 

 

Thor looked the man over, taking in his injuries and fragile condition. “I’m sorry, my friend. It’s too dangerous. You must stay here, where you can be safe.”

 

Alec looked desperately from one brother to the other. “Loki,” he pleaded, planting himself square in front of Loki to make him look at him. “Let me help. Let me go with you. It doesn’t matter what you did, or what I said. None of it. The only thing that matters is you’re back.” Gingerly Alec leaned forward and touched his lips to Loki’s. 

 

Unable to stop the instinct Alec brought out in him, Loki vanished his daggers and took Alec’s face in his hands, deepening the kiss, his heart giving a leap of joy even in the midst of their failure. He ran his fingers through Alec’s messy ponytail in a familiar gesture. The texture of it made it feel like it was made of sand, so Loki pulled back from the kiss and looked at his hand - which was now full of dust.

 

“Loki, I - what’s -” Alec blinked and looked around helplessly, crumpling into Loki’s arms as he vanished into dust.

 

Loki couldn’t breathe. He squeezed his hands around the dust in them and released it into the breeze. 

 

“He did it,” he whispered, numbness threatening to swallow him whole. Slowly the cries of anguish and pain drifted over the battlefield, and Loki knew more were disappearing by the second. “I’ll kill him. I swear, Alec, if it’s the last thing I do, if I have to go down with him, I will drive my dagger into that twisted Titan’s eye socket myself, and I will drag him kicking and screaming to the gates of Hel.”

 

“Loki.” Thor was staring at his hands, his brow furrowed. “Thanos’ magic, it’s trying to work on me.” He cried out and wrapped his arms around his abdomen, falling to his knees in the dirt. Loki was instantly at his side, his hands fluttering over Thor’s body, trying uselessly to negate the magic. “Take my axe - ah! - and use the Bifrost to find Thanos.” Thor, his arms shaking uncontrollably, placed both hands at the nape of Loki’s neck and looked him square in the eye with no fear or doubt. Loki felt tears streaming down his face as he began to panic - what would he do without Thor? “You are worthy of it. Loki, please. I know you can do it, my brother.” Taking one long, ragged breath, Thor smiled. “Don’t fear, for the sun will shine on us again.” 

 

With a final sigh, Thor crumbled into dust, leaving Loki alone with the axe. He closed his eyes and screamed at the top of his voice until he was hoarse, his seidr knocking down all of the trees within a fifty-foot radius of where he knelt in what remained of his brother.

 

How in the Nine was he going to find Thanos without Thor, let alone defeat him? What if he couldn’t bring him back? Loki had faced Thanos by himself before, back when his only wish was to die and the Titan had refused him that request, and he had turned Loki into an unwilling puppet. He would rather die a thousand deaths than for Thanos to get his hands on him again.

 

_ Take my axe… _

 

Loki looked over his shoulder at the axe on the ground, its blade still coated in Thanos’ blood. Logically he knew it wouldn’t have the same spell on it that Mjolnir had had, but he still doubted he could lift it. His knees trembled violently as he pulled himself up to stand, and Loki forced himself to walk over to the axe. Slowly, deliberately, he bent down and grasped the handle, straining a bit to pull it up off of the ground. Loki gasped when he finally got it raised to his chest, using his other hand to balance out the weight of it. 

 

Though it had only been Thor’s for a matter of hours, he still felt the touch of Thor’s power flowing through the axe. Loki pushed a bit of his seidr into it and it responded instantly, green lightning arcing around it and into his hands. He looked to the sky, remembering Thor’s promise, and swore to keep it.

 

_ The sun will shine on us again. _

 


End file.
